I heard this KQRZ this afternoon and I said 'dang, that sounds familiar', but I looked at the artist and I had never heard of Them. So to Mr. Wikipedia we go where the whole history is revealed:
"Baby, Please Don't Go" is a traditional blues song that was popularized by Delta blues musician Big Joe Williams in 1935. Many cover versions followed, leading to its description as "one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in blues history" by French music historian Gérard Herzhaft.
After World War II, Chicago blues and rhythm and blues artists adapted the song to newer music styles. In 1952, a doo-wop version by the Orioles reached the top ten on the R&B chart. In 1953, Muddy Waters recorded the song as an electric Chicago-ensemble blues piece, which influenced many subsequent renditions. By the early 1950s, the song became a blues standard.
In the 1960s, "Baby, Please Don't Go" became a popular rock song after the Northern Irish group Them recorded it in 1964. Jimmy Page, a studio guitarist at the time, participated in the recording session, possibly on rhythm guitar. Subsequently, Them's uptempo rock arrangement also made it a rock standard. Paul Revere & The Raiders, AC/DC, Aerosmith, John Mellencamp, Amboy Dukes, and Budgie are among the rock groups who have recorded the song. "Baby, Please Don't Go" has been inducted into both the Blues and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame.
I started reading The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo this evening and on second page of the story (page 10 of the book) he mentions a bunch of locked room murder mysteries and I'm wondering if they are real or just something he made up. Turns out they are all real books.
“She bound the scarlet line in the window.” Joshua 2:21
A shibboleth is a special kind of password, which is to say a key or badge that opens a social door and grants admission to a social group. As everyone versed in scripture knowledge knows, shibboleth was at first a word that the lisping Ephramites could not pronounce, and that the Sons of Giliad therefore used to identify the survivors of a shattered Ephramite army. When a bloodied and bedraggled warrior staggered down to the ford of the Jordan, he was challenged to pronounce the word “shibboleth,” and thereby show his secret badge. Those who pronounced it “sibboleth” were immediately slain.
As I explained some years ago, shibboleths often take the form of sacrilege. The password that grants admission to one social group is in such cases a violation of the norms of that group’s enemy. Thus anti-Christian secret societies used to require an aspiring member to trample on a crucifix, spit on a Bible, or otherwise treat the sacred objects and words Christianity as profane. In on-line culture, such sacrilegious shibboleths are called “shill tests,” and in these tests an aspiring member is required to type words that an undercover agent would find it very hard to type. As I explained in that long-ago post, to get past the sentries of one group, you must often slay another group’s sacred cow.
A shibboleth is a password that prevents infiltration by spies. A “scarlet thread” is a secret badge with which a traitor makes himself known to his new compatriots, and is thereby passed over when his new compatriots descend like wolves on the people whose compatriot the traitor only pretends to be. Like shibboleth, the term “scarlet thread” comes from the Old Testament, and more particularly from the curious tale of a traitor known as Rahab the Harlot.
Rahab the Harlot dwells in the city of Jericho, and when Joshua sends two spies into that city, the two young men somehow fall in with Rahab, who we must never forget is a harlot, and she hides these two handsome young spies in her house. This house was built on, or rather up against, the city wall; and on its city-wall side had a high window that looked out over the countryside. It was from this high window that Rahab lowered Joshua’s spies on a “scarlet thread,” after telling them that her people were ripe for conquest because they were rotten with fear.
“Your terror is fallen upon us . . . the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.”
Rahab’s reward for betraying her people is that she and her family will be spared when Jericho is sacked and its citizens are slaughtered. But to assure their deliverance, Rahab must keep her family in her house (of ill repute), and must display the “scarlet thread” in the front window. of that house.
“Behold, when we come into the land, thou shall bind this thread in the window which thou didst let us down by; and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee” Joshua 2: 18.
Thus a “scarlet thread” is a means whereby a traitor escapes the destruction brought down by his or her treason. One wonders how many who “miraculously” survive some near-universal destruction owe their deliverance to display of a secret badge or “scarlet thread.” Rahab was a harlot, so she knew how treachery works.
“She bound the scarlet line in the window.”
Not long after, as every Sunday-school scholar knows, Joshua’s army compasses the city of Jericho and “the walls came a tumbling down.” Then, as many Sunday-school scholars do not know, before the sack and slaughter begins, a house displaying a “scarlet thread” is sought and a traitorous harlot is saved. Which was very fortunate for that traitorous harlot and her family, because of Joshua’s army we are told:
“They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” Joshua 6: 21
Like a shibboleth, a “scarlet thread” is a special kind of password, although it grants its possessor the privilege of escape and not admission. It is a secret badge with which traitors and spies show their true colors to their true friends, and by which traitors and spies are exempted when their true friends utterly destroy their pretended friends with the edge of the sword.
I have no use for most poetry, at least not the fancy kind, the high falutin' kind that uses esoteric words to talk about ephemeral concepts. Poetry that uses ordinary words, meaning words I know, and short lines that rhyme, like those by Rudyard Kipling or nursery rhymes are more my cup of tea. Poems like this one by JMSmith:
Blooms come, they say, from April showers,
All else comes of the three powers,
Which I can name in a short list:
The purse, the pen, the pounding fist.
If the purse should aught require,
It can purchase, rent or hire,
All goods being to market brought,
All men on offer to be bought,
It can suborn, incentivize,
Pay fists to pound, pens to write lies.
The pen to enlist volunteers,
Fills hearts with lusts and heads with fears,
Sparks firestorms of righteous rage,
Plays now the pander, now the sage,
Coaxes the tight-tied purse to spill,
Cajoles the pounding fist to kill.
And very few can long can resist
Persuasion by the pounding fist,
So what brute force wants, it gets,
The toadying praise of scribbling wits,
The contents of the tight-tied purse,
These and much more it can coerce.
Sniff if you like the bright May flowers,
Slave you remain to these three powers,
Bought by the purse, by pen bewitched,
By pounding fist to hard toil hitched.
I can't say as I enjoyed the show. Most of the singing grated on my ears. However I can't tell you whether it was the singing, the sound system or my ears. It sounded like it was being overdriven. Or maybe I am just used to the sound that comes out of my Blue Tooth speaker and live music is just different. Whatever, the kids were just horrible, most of the rest just blared. Daddy Warbucks and his personal assistant were much better, they actually sounded like music.
But it's a curious show. It's set in 1933 right in the depths of the depression. We have half a dozen Hoovervilles in New York City. Things are pretty grim. Annie is living in an orphanage with half a dozen other little girls and she suddenly gets plucked out of her miserable existence and deposited in a royal palace. It's a ridiculous fantasy but it gives us an opportunity to examine poverty and wealth.
The 'aww' exclamation from nearly everyone in the audience when the dog appeared on stage was surprising. It was also a bit puzzling. Hasn't anyone ever seen a dog before?
The show is based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. I used to read it when I was a kid. I couldn't tell you what it was about, but I do know most of the principle characters:
Annie
Sandy, her dog
Daddy Warbucks, super wealthy industrialist
Punjab, a mysterious dude from India
Asp, another mysterious dude.
Punjab and Asp are mysterious because all I recollect is that they were characters in the strip. I know nothing else about them. I used the picture from Amazon because it was the only one that had all the characters in it. I don't know who the chick is.
The Wikipedia article is enlightening and entertaining. Among other things, Harold Gray, the creator of the strip, hated FDR and his policies. I've heard some criticism of FDR's policies, but he was in charge and that's what we got. It's not enough to have a better idea, you need to convince the people in power that your idea is better. The convincing part can be a hard row to hoe. In the show Warbucks and FDR were at least cordial.
The blurb from the Amazon book paints a pretty good picture:
A chronological reprinting of one of the most important comic strips of the 20th Century. Annie is a cultural icon--in both her red-headed, blank-eyed appearance, and as the embodiment of American individuality, spunk, and self-reliance. Even those who've never read the comic strip are keenly aware of the plucky orphan, her loveable mutt Sandy, and her adoptive benefactor, Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks, through the Broadway play, the hit movie, and the song "Tomorrow," made famous by both.
It's "Open Season for Trouble" as America's spunkiest kid, "Daddy" Warbucks, and his bodyguards Punjab and The Asp battle wily Communist spies, search for a potentially game-changing mineral known as QX-7, contend with small-town cheats, and make a frightful discovery about disappearing patients at a shady rest home. The action ranges from the played-out mining town of Fiasco, where "Daddy" made his first million, to the land of the genii, where Punjab dispatches his enemies. Meanwhile, Annie and Sandy are separated, but their inevitable reunion may be a silver lining inside a very dark cloud! Volume 15 collects the daily strips and full-color Sunday pages from March 13, 1950 to October 28, 1951 in five vivid stories filled with mayhem and murder. It's not for the faint of heart!
